


and let it fall

by theviolonist



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-31
Updated: 2012-05-31
Packaged: 2017-11-06 10:15:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/417707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theviolonist/pseuds/theviolonist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Liam is a calculator.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and let it fall

From the start, he's always been  _too much_  for him.

 

Liam remembers his first glance at them like it was yesterday (it was) – how he'd stepped back and thought,  _here they are_  or maybe  _here i am_ over the cheer. He'd looked at them, thoroughly, like he does, like Liam Payne does – the way someone would try to solve an equation, two and two equals four.

 

Niall is pretty simple, as far as equations go. Liam looks at him and thinks,  _this is gonna be okay_ , because Niall equals a good four, clean and round with milky cheeks and a smile the size of the sun.

 

He looks at Zayn, then. He's standing apart from the celebrations, like he's savouring his happiness in a quiet place in his head, where there's just him and the quiet fingers he curls in his hands, like a fist he doesn't raise in the air but that says,  _i won_  all the same. It won't be easy, Liam thinks, but he tries and adds Zayn's number – he doesn't know what it is yet – to Niall's shiny four in his head, and what comes out of it is something that barely resembles a number at all, a faded nine and a half with all these numbers after the comma, seven and zero and endless decimals.

 

_Breathe_ , Liam thinks. He breathes like he's learned to. In, out. Out. Out.

 

He looks at them again, and he catches Zayn's face as it's being torn in two by a smile – it curls at the corners of his mouth and stays there for a second before wilting away, but Zayn seems to keep the quiet exultation clenched between his teeth.  _Okay_ , thinks Liam. This will be okay too.

 

But then, then he looks at Harry and Louis, jumping up and down and into each other's arms, two boys that didn't know each other two hours ago, something like ferocious joy written on Louis's face, and that is okay, Louis isn't easy to decipher but there's Harry next to him, and Liam looks at Harry and all he can think is,  _down the drain._

 

He lets the first pieces of his heart trickle, and he feels irrationnally angry that he wasn't asked it  _he_ wanted to give it away.

 

*

 

He doesn't stop being too much. At first he's too much hair, too much touch, too much words, and then it grows increasingly personal –  _too much heat, too much love, too much, too much_. Looking at him and Louis rips his heart apart quietly. Liam doesn't say anything. He's a coward, deep down.

 

*

 

The first time Harry kisses him, Liam is expecting it.

 

They're at a party where there's music and pretty girls with headbands and towering heels and also pretty boys that smile invitingly, and there's  _Harry_ , too, and Liam can't fucking keep his eyes off him. And he feels so angry, so angry that he was trapped into this when he really hadn't asked for anything, but he can't feel angry because he can just feel numb, because it's who he is.

 

He doesn't drink. Harry does.

 

He comes stumbling at Liam's feet, words bubbling out of his shinyred lips with wet pops, and he should look pathetic but instead he looks fucking  _glorious_ , and Liam just – can't.

 

"Go away," he croaks.

 

Harry doesn't. It's like a rule – Harry never does what he's told, never complies, never backs down. Liam wonders what he would be like trapped in someone's arms, unable to flee.

 

"Stay," he repeats.

 

Harry doesn't leave, just hauls himself up on his elbows, and Liam wants him to go away so  _hard_ , but he doesn't, he just looks at Liam, and then he curls his fingers around his wrist and licks there, as though he were trying to swallow Liam's heartbeat.

 

Liam's entire body throbs with the music like a wave, like he's going to dissolve and become seafoam or just evaporate. He feels weak.

 

Harry looks up and kisses him. His thumb slides from Liam's wrist to his palm, where it falls.  _Thump thump ta-thump_ , says the music, faceless and ironic.

 

Harry tastes sweet, like deceit and Louis.

 

Liam probably takes more time than he should to push him away, but he does, he knocks the stool over and he runs away, because his life isn't that, it isn't being kissed by someone for whom you're second best, it's always been that and Liam just can't take it anymore.

 

*

 

It shouldn't happen again, but it does.

 

One night he's sleeping and then suddenly there's someone behind his back, a hot body trying to mold itself around him. He jerks back. Harry whines. Liam feels angry, like he should kick him out, but he can't, and he doesn't.  _Harry Styles_ , he thinks, hazed and half-asleep, and he catches the tail of an errant thougt,  _… the death of me._

 

"Hold me," says Harry.

 

_No_ , thinks Liam. He'd like to be able to be selfish, just once, because he doesn't want to hold Harry and pretend to be someone else, and he's had enough of this, of Zayn looking at him over his cigarette fumes with pity in his eyes and  _you're hurting yourself_ on his lips, of Niall pretending not to care but jumping back at every interaction Liam and Harry have, of Louis looking at him half jealously and half like he knows and he's been there, half  _don't fall like I did_  and  _one of us is enough_. It angers Liam that he seems to think of himself as a martyr.

 

Liam isn't equipped to deal with loving people. He's a calculator.

 

But he lets Harry worm himself into his arms, and he lowers his lips to his temple and he says,  _it's okay it's okay it's okay_ and he thinks  _it's not okay_ because it's his fault but god does he love him, and it's strange and scary and the wrong thing to do but it's Harry and Liam just doesn't have another explanation to offer.

 

Harry doesn't say thank you.

 

Liam hadn't expected him to, because Harry rarely apologizes for anything, but it stings a little bit anyway. Liam is used to things stinging, but God knows he shouldn't be. He justs sits there for a minute and looks at his hands and breaths and wonders if someone could read something in the messed lines that cross in his the flesh of his palms. Then he closes his eyes and he counts quietly, two and thirty-seven, one hundred and eighty nine minus ten times three and a half.

 

The numbers soothe him until the boys burst in the room, loud and oblivious, utterly unapologetic. Harry looks at him and says something that Liam doesn't quite catch but he gets his eyes and the deep thrum of his voice and all he's done just crashes around him like a house of cards, and he breaks quietly once again, and no one sees.

 

*

 

Liam would like a schedule for when Harry kisses him, so he can hold back on the tape a little while before and stop trying to save himself. The comedown is always a bit hard, and sometimes he just can't deal with feeling everything he built back up fall apart.

 

And there's that, he's been good,  _good_  like good can be for him, hesitantly steady with half-open eyes, barely out of the water, and then Harry mumbles, "come" for some reason and asks to be pressed into the corner of one of the venues, back against a piano like a stupid schoolgirl fantasy, and he tugs Liam down and kisses him rough, kisses him swollen and aching and bruising red.

 

And the thing is, Liam can't say no. He just can't say no, so he doesn't say no and he doesn't say yes either but Harry doesn't  _care_ , he kisses him with a hot tongue and eyelids painted with purple veins, and Liam lets his hands fall haphazardly around their bodies because he doesn't want to touch, and they catch on a cello's strings. It burns. Hot tears rush to Liam's eyes. He thinks,  _it's so unfair_ , because it is.

 

He watches Harry laugh a little breathlessly, looking hatefully gorgeous and unruffled and uncaring, and he says, "Help me."

 

It ends up sounding more like a plea than a demand, but Harry complies and pretends not to know that this wasn't about Liam's burns. Liam feels weirdly happy that no one can pretend to read something in his hands anymore. 

 

He doesn't explain the burns to the others. He's tired, and sad, and his fucking heart is getting broken at every second and he didn't ask for this, he just came here wanting to sing and be a quiet calculator, wanting to be happy with his numbers and his fractions and his minus signs. He was easy.

 

But then Harry happened, and fuck if that isn't some twisted sort of destiny, Liam thinks.

 

*

 

Liam doesn't really react when Harry takes his shirt off (why should he? He always thinks  _not yours_ when he sees his body, anyway, because it's what it is, not his even when he has it, and how fucking pathetic is that but he doesn't even care). He looks at his sinewy body in the sunlight, how it glistens and gleams, and he wonders once again if Harry feels nothing, but he knows it's not true, because Harry shows cracks every so often, only they're never cracks for  _him_.

 

He laughs with an open throat. Liam watches the sun wash over him and leave him painted golden.

 

"Come," he laughs. Liam has heard this so often – he wonders if someday he'll be able to just say,  _no._

 

_One_ , he thinks as he gets up and walks into the sunlight. It's harsh for him, it stings and prickles his skin. He's not a golden child like Harry (there's Louis hanging back somewhere, face split in a grin – sometimes Liam wonders exactly who he is).

 

Harry giggles and takes his hands in his Liam wants to wrench them out of his reach and say,  _don't take everything that's mine_ , but he already has (Liam wants to pull him against his chest and say,  _love me instead_ , but he doesn't who this  _instead_  refers to, Louis or Caroline or the rest of the world).

 

_Two_ , he thinks as he closes his eyes. Niall laughs and it's an easy sound, rolling like a wave on his tongue. Harry lets go of his hands. Zayn puts a hand on his shoulder, hothothot, too close, as if to say something,  _don't worry_ or  _you'll be okay_  or another lie.

 

_Three_ , Liam thinks, and he jumps into the pool. The water is thick and full of chlorine and agressively blue. It infiltrates his nostrils and makes him cough. the boys look down at him, startled, and laugh. Harry winks like they have some sort of secret.

 

Liam closes his eyes again. His head hurts, and his entire body aches; he lets himself sink in the water and tries to pretend like he's drowning, just for this quiet minute, in the blessed silence.


End file.
